Stratagems #24: Leo Built a Corridor. The AI Thought It Was a Road.

Between two great powers, when a neighbor presses you to follow, borrow its momentum. A cornered state will not believe your words.

— The 36 Stratagems, Obtain safe passage to conquer the State of Guo

Previously on this series:

#10: Lena Watched a Team Adopt Her AI Template. Leo Didn't Know the Knife Was in the Contract. — Lena came to CoreStack as a consultant and built Leo's reporting template. Five weeks later the template went live and locked in six months of baseline data. Leo learned he'd been taken by a smile.

#14: Leo Found an AI Leak. He Wasn't the First to Find It. — FinOptima was writing stolen training data back through its cache. Leo injected fifteen lines of weight drift. In the same logs he saw the name acl-train for the first time and filed it in his own _misc/.